There’s that old adage, “write what you know.” I’m wondering if there should be a sub-adage, “write what you don’t know.” What do I mean by that? I’m glad you asked.
I don’t know what it is to be someone other than me. Pardon the solipsism, but I truly feel this is so. I can imagine, I can sympathize (maybe even sometimes empathize), I can intellectually understand what it must be like to be someone else, but way down deep, I don’t actually know what it is. Hell, there’s times I don’t quite know what it is to be me, so what chance to I have to really know what it means to be someone else?
There’s some school of thought that says every character a writer creates is them in one way or another. I think I understand that school of thought–if I can’t actually be anyone else, then it follows, ipso facto, that anything I create is some expression of me. I get that, but at the same time…I very much want to reject that. Because it’s horribly depressing. It’s sad almost beyond words to think that my universe is ultimately populated by one person. There’s an unbearable feeling of loneliness in that. Solopsism (this belief that only you exist or, as I’m using it, only you yourself can be understood by you) goes beyond feeling disconnected, because that implies there was or can be a connection that is simply not being made. No, this way of thinking leads to the opposite of Donne’s “No Man is an Island” approach to life. So I resist it.
Writing a character that’s not meant to be me is both challenging and rewarding. If I do it right (and by “right,” I mean that the character takes over and writes him-, her-, or themself) then I honestly feel as if I’ve connected not just to this figment of my imagination but somehow breached the barrier between myself and other real people. If I can make an imaginary person be NOT me, then maybe I can crawl around in someone else’s skin and walk around a bit.
I try very hard to be a good person. Honestly, I think most folks do. We don’t always succeed, and not all of us work as hard at it as we should (recall Oscar Wilde’s quote: “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”) but I think we’re trying to be good. I also think that fundamentally that process demands seeing other people. It’s kind of like the art of conversation. Conversation is not “I talk, then you make noises with your mouth-hole and when you’re done, it’s my turn again” like a few too many of us seem to think it is. I don’t know what I’m going to say next, because you haven’t said your piece yet. What I say is a product of what you said, and so on. What I do is a product of what you do, right? Reminds me of that trait people say they admire in others–”Oh, I like so-and-so because they don’t care what anyone thinks about them!” Well, that’s a sociopath, right? OF COURSE we should care what others think of us! If I step on your foot, I should care about it and apologize. I realize people mean to say, “the person I admire does not change who they are simply because of popular opinion,” but even THAT is problematic, yes? I grant you, one should not change one’s core beliefs on the whims of TikTok, but on the other hand, one should not refuse to change no matter what, right?
Back to character writing–I know it’s a big controversy now about folks writing genders/races/heritages or what have you that they themselves have not experienced or have no particular claim on. A white (are we capitalizing this? I’m still not sure) cisgendered male writer should not write about a Black gay woman, for example, or so the thinking goes. I’m simplifying, perhaps oversimplifying, but that’s the general gist. Except…how can that possibly be the right approach? I’m not laying claim to a heritage, or a gender, or an identity I don’t myself possess when I write a character that’s not me, and I am certainly not trying to appropriate or colonize or grab someone else’s in service to my own story. I know the argument is something to do with reductionism, but every single artistic expression of ANYTHING is reductive by its very nature, yes? I’m sorry to all my liberal friends–and I consider myself EXTREMELY liberal–but I simply cannot subscribe to the theory that each person can only express themselves AS THEMSELVES.
I go back to that original school of thought: we write ultimately ourselves and no one else. I can’t agree. I just can’t. Maybe I’m not getting something, maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me the only hope we’ve got is to write what we DON’T know. That’s the only way we can ever hope to know one another, however imperfectly.
And that’s the beginning of goodness.
Be seeing you!
I don’t know what it is to be someone other than me. Pardon the solipsism, but I truly feel this is so. I can imagine, I can sympathize (maybe even sometimes empathize), I can intellectually understand what it must be like to be someone else, but way down deep, I don’t actually know what it is. Hell, there’s times I don’t quite know what it is to be me, so what chance to I have to really know what it means to be someone else?
There’s some school of thought that says every character a writer creates is them in one way or another. I think I understand that school of thought–if I can’t actually be anyone else, then it follows, ipso facto, that anything I create is some expression of me. I get that, but at the same time…I very much want to reject that. Because it’s horribly depressing. It’s sad almost beyond words to think that my universe is ultimately populated by one person. There’s an unbearable feeling of loneliness in that. Solopsism (this belief that only you exist or, as I’m using it, only you yourself can be understood by you) goes beyond feeling disconnected, because that implies there was or can be a connection that is simply not being made. No, this way of thinking leads to the opposite of Donne’s “No Man is an Island” approach to life. So I resist it.
Writing a character that’s not meant to be me is both challenging and rewarding. If I do it right (and by “right,” I mean that the character takes over and writes him-, her-, or themself) then I honestly feel as if I’ve connected not just to this figment of my imagination but somehow breached the barrier between myself and other real people. If I can make an imaginary person be NOT me, then maybe I can crawl around in someone else’s skin and walk around a bit.
I try very hard to be a good person. Honestly, I think most folks do. We don’t always succeed, and not all of us work as hard at it as we should (recall Oscar Wilde’s quote: “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”) but I think we’re trying to be good. I also think that fundamentally that process demands seeing other people. It’s kind of like the art of conversation. Conversation is not “I talk, then you make noises with your mouth-hole and when you’re done, it’s my turn again” like a few too many of us seem to think it is. I don’t know what I’m going to say next, because you haven’t said your piece yet. What I say is a product of what you said, and so on. What I do is a product of what you do, right? Reminds me of that trait people say they admire in others–”Oh, I like so-and-so because they don’t care what anyone thinks about them!” Well, that’s a sociopath, right? OF COURSE we should care what others think of us! If I step on your foot, I should care about it and apologize. I realize people mean to say, “the person I admire does not change who they are simply because of popular opinion,” but even THAT is problematic, yes? I grant you, one should not change one’s core beliefs on the whims of TikTok, but on the other hand, one should not refuse to change no matter what, right?
Back to character writing–I know it’s a big controversy now about folks writing genders/races/heritages or what have you that they themselves have not experienced or have no particular claim on. A white (are we capitalizing this? I’m still not sure) cisgendered male writer should not write about a Black gay woman, for example, or so the thinking goes. I’m simplifying, perhaps oversimplifying, but that’s the general gist. Except…how can that possibly be the right approach? I’m not laying claim to a heritage, or a gender, or an identity I don’t myself possess when I write a character that’s not me, and I am certainly not trying to appropriate or colonize or grab someone else’s in service to my own story. I know the argument is something to do with reductionism, but every single artistic expression of ANYTHING is reductive by its very nature, yes? I’m sorry to all my liberal friends–and I consider myself EXTREMELY liberal–but I simply cannot subscribe to the theory that each person can only express themselves AS THEMSELVES.
I go back to that original school of thought: we write ultimately ourselves and no one else. I can’t agree. I just can’t. Maybe I’m not getting something, maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me the only hope we’ve got is to write what we DON’T know. That’s the only way we can ever hope to know one another, however imperfectly.
And that’s the beginning of goodness.
Be seeing you!
RSS Feed